Remember a few weeks ago when China figured that if the United States could pressure technology companies to install backdoors in their products for the government to access user data then so could they? Apparently that’s changed and now China has backed away from that legal push, perhaps as a result of the intense pressure that the United States government was putting on China.
China’s central government has reportedly halted the advance of proposed antiterror legislation that would have forced technology companies doing business in the country to install government-accessible backdoors in their products, provide keys for any encrypted communications services, and require data for Chinese users to remain in China. “They have decided to suspend the third reading of that particular law, which has sort of put that on hiatus for the moment,” White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel said earlier this week, as noted by Reuters. “We did see that as something that was bad not just for U.S. business but for the global economy as a whole, and it was something we felt was very important to communicate very clearly to them.”
